Why Team USA Figure Skaters Received Gold Medals at the Paris Summer Olympics

The temperature in Paris was hovering near 80ºF, but it felt even hotter in the blazing sun during the Olympic medal ceremony Wednesday at Champions Park under the Eiffel Tower in Paris. And instead of Olympians who had recently won medals in summer sports like swimming, gymnastics, and fencing at the 2024 Games, the first athletes honored were…figure skaters.

Team USA and Team Japan figure skaters from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics finally received their medals in Paris, two and a half years after they competed. In Beijing, the Russians— competing as the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) due to an ongoing ban over the country's doping efforts—finished first in the team event, followed by the U.S. and Japan. But a positive doping test for a banned substance from one of the women’s event skaters, Kamila Valieva, put the final standings in question. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to postpone the awarding of any medals and the skaters left Beijing without knowing the outcome of the team event.

It wasn’t until January 2024 that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), an independent review body that investigated the circumstances surrounding Valieva's positive sample, ruled that her scores should be eliminated from the team event, as well as the women’s event in which she also competed and finished fourth. In the team event, that moved the U.S. up to gold and Japan to silver while Russia moved down to bronze. The Russian skaters did not participate in the ceremony in Paris.

“As soon as we left Beijing, and our team was asked, what’s your dream scenario? We said we wanted to be in Paris and wanted to get the gold medal, and that is exactly what happened,” says Evan Bates, who with now-wife Madison Chock was one of the two ice dancing teams who competed in the team event.

The group also decided that if not all of them—Bates, Chock, Karen Chen, Nathan Chen, Zachary Donohue, Brandon Frazier, Madison Hubbell, Alexa Knierim, and Vincent Zhou—could make the medal ceremony, they would not come to Paris. “If we’re not all going to be there, then we don’t want to have [the ceremony] yet,” Nathan Chen, who also won gold in the men's event, said of the team’s desire to receive their medals together.

“Usually there is churn in terms of members between Olympic cycles, but our team competed together through one or two Olympic cycles,” said Zhou, who developed COVID-19 after skating in the team event and was unable to compete in the men's event. “So for four to eight years we all came up together, we all experienced the same struggles at competition after competition, and Olympics after Olympics. Going through all of that and coming through it with this result is incredible for all of us.”

Life is very different for most of them, and competitive skating is no longer part of their lives. Only Chock and Bates, who got married in June, are continuing to train, with an eye toward competing in the 2026 Games in Milan and Cortina. Karen Chen, who competed in the women's event, is back in college at Cornell University, expecting to graduate in 2025. Nathan Chen graduated from Yale and is planning on attending medical school. Hubbell, who with partner Donohue earned bronze in the ice dance event in Beijing, got married to Spanish ice dancer Adrian Diaz in 2023. The couple welcomed a baby, Chloe, earlier this year—and Hubbell brought her daughter with her to enjoy the medal ceremony in Paris. Donohue married an ice dancer as well and now works as a choreographer. Zhou ended his internship at a financial services company in New York early in order to attend the ceremony in Paris, and will return to finish his last year at Brown University in the fall. Education is also the top priority for Frazier, who is pursuing a business degree while coaching pairs skating in California.

The delay, however, is bittersweet, especially given the uncertainty that the skaters have lived with over the past two and a half years. “There were many times where I thought that the thought of coming to Paris was just something to fill our hearts with hope,” said Knierim. “I didn’t really think it was going to happen. It was disappoint to have to live through the turmoil of uncertainty. So I that regard, it was not ideal. I am happy that we were able to have this moment but nothing would have replaced the moment in Beijing at our [Olympic] Village, in our Olympic gear, and in that moment with the hype and excitement. The pain that we’ve endured over these two and a half years will always be there.”

Nathan Chen, who also won gold in the men’s event and received that medal in Beijing, agreed, noting “there are pros and cons” to the Paris medals ceremony. “Beijing—that’s our Olympics, that’s where we belong, and that’s where we competed. So there’s definitely sentimental value with—this is amazing, and so beautiful, but it’s not Beijing. But at the same time, we’re at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Like how cool is this? It’s definitely a unique experience. But it’s apples to oranges” comparing the two, he said.

One plus of the Paris ceremony, other than the iconic location—the skaters received their medals in front of family and friends, who couldn’t be in Beijing because of strict COVID-19 policies that banned spectators.

In some ways, the delayed ceremony provides critical and timely leverage for an issue that continues to plague every major sports event, including the Olympic Games—doping. The reason the U.S. and Japanese teams waited so long for their medals was due to Valieva’s violation involving trimetazidine (TMZ), a heart drug approved in some countries but not in the U.S., that can improve blood flow and therefore potentially aid athletes in training. The Russian Anti-Doping Agency concluded that Valieva’s positive test, which occurred at the Russian national championships, was due to contamination with her grandfather’s medication, and after a provisional suspension, allowed her to compete at the Beijing Olympics.

TMZ is an issue again in Paris, as investigations revealed that nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers, some of whom raced in Paris, tested positive for TMZ before the Tokyo Olympic Games but were not sanctioned by China’s anti-doping agency. Chinese officials also determined that the positive samples resulted from contamination of food the swimmers ate while at a hotel.

“At the end of the day, as athletes, clean sport is integral to competing here [at the Olympics] and really, it kind of defeats the purpose of competing if there isn’t a clean and level playing field,” said Nathan Chen. Revising the standings of the team figure skating event, he said, “is a precedent. “At least we know now that given the situation, this is what the result was.”